Former Kindergarten Teacher Sentenced for Child Pornography

(CN) – A former kindergarten teacher in Alabama was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday, after pleading guilty to one count of producing child pornography.

Charles McCormack, 54, of Muscle Shoals, Ala., pleaded guilty to the charge in November 2017 before Chief U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre of the Northern District of Alabama.

The sentence was announced Monday in a statement by Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan of the Justice Department’s criminal division and U.S. Attorney Jay Town.

Following the 10-year prison term, McCormack will also be subject to three-years supervised release.

According to the Justice Department , McCormack admitted to producing child pornography between Aug. 1, 1997 and Oct. 15, 1998.

“McCormack used an approximately six-year-old girl to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing visual depictions of the conduct, by videotaping the girl urinating in a bathroom in his Colbert County, Alabama residence,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

According to prosecutors, a 2016 search of McCormack’s home by law enforcement also revealed “images of nude and topless females believed to constitute child pornography and a suitcase containing young girls’ panties.”

At the time of the search, McCormack was working as a kindergarten teacher, they said.

The investigation was part of Project Safe Childhood, a Justice Department initiative to combat the exploitation and abuse of children using federal, state and local resources.

The prosecutors for the case included attorney William Grady of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Chinelo Dike-Minor of the Northern District of Alabama.